Saturday, December 01, 2012

Suit claims payment for useless therapy

Gay “conversion therapy,” which claims to help men overcome unwanted same-sex attractions but has been widely attacked as unscientific and harmful, is facing its first tests in the courtroom.

In New Jersey on Tuesday, four gay men who tried the therapy filed a civil suit against a prominent counseling group, charging it with deceptive practices under the state’s Consumer Fraud Act. ...

In California, so-called ex-gay therapists have gone to court to argue for the other side. They are seeking to block a new state law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September and celebrated as a milestone by advocates for gay rights, that bans conversion therapy for minors.

In Sacramento on Friday, a federal judge will hear the first of two legal challenges brought by conservative law groups claiming that the ban is an unconstitutional infringement on speech, religion and privacy.

Since the 1970s, when mainstream mental health associations stopped branding homosexuality as a disorder, a small network of renegade therapists, conservative religious leaders and self-identified “life coaches” has continued to argue that it is not inborn, but an aberration rooted in childhood trauma. Homosexuality is caused, these therapists say, by a stifling of normal masculine development, often by distant fathers and overbearing mothers or by early sexual abuse. ...

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a rights group based in Montgomery, Ala., is bringing the suit on behalf of four former patients and two of their mothers, who say they paid thousands of dollars not only for useless therapy for their sons but also for more counseling to undo the damage.

“The defendants peddled antigay pseudoscience, defaming gay people as loathsome and deranged,” said Sam Wolfe, a lawyer with the group. ...

“It becomes fraudulent, even cruel,” he said in an interview. “To say that if you really want to change you could — that’s an awful thing to tell somebody.”

The SPLC is a racist hate group that likes to file lawsuits to push its leftist anti-white-Christian agenda.

There are millions of Americans who have been succkered into paying thousands of dollars for useless therapy. I am all for holding therapists accountable, but why just these? What does this have to do with Southern poverty?

Why is it such an awful thing to tell someone that he can change if he really wants to? Telling people that they can change has been a constructive and inspiring message for millennia.

Meanwhile, the SPLC and other leftist groups are silent about the psychologists who peddle anti-father and anti-Christian pseudoscience, such Ken B. Perlmutter, Bret K. Johnson, and Faren R. Akins. At least the conversion therapists are trying to help people, while the family court psychologists are maliciously trying to destroy families.